‘City
of
Roses’
Volume XLVI • Number 10
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • March 8, 2017
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Photo by Z aChary S enn /t he P ortland o bServer
The Portland Harbor Superfund Site covers both sides of the Willamette River from Portland’s Broadway Bridge to Sauvie Island and covers areas that have served both
historically and currently as centers of heavy industry.
Our Contaminated Harbor
Superfund cleanup
gets ready for
implementation
Z aChary S enn
t he P ortland o bServer
Nearly 11 miles of the Willamette
River’s most contaminated waters and
shoreline is due to be cleaned thanks to
a recently released Record of Decision
from the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. The Portland Harbor Superfund
Site stretches from the Broadway Bridge
to Sauvie Island and covers areas that
by
have served both historically and cur-
rently as centers of heavy industry. A
series of informational meetings being
held in Portland this week will seek to
educate community members and other
stakeholders about the cleanup effort’s
implementation.
Lumber mills, shipyards and chemi-
cal manufacturing along the river helped
transform Portland into one of the North-
west’s most productive industrial cen-
ters. Today, however, nearly a century’s
worth of toxic dumping and other en-
vironmentally destructive practices has
transformed the Lower Willamette into a
veritable wasteland of noxious contami-
nates and unhealthy wildlife.
In the nearly two decades since the
Portland Harbor area was added to the
EPA’s Superfund priority list, a series
of studies were conducted to determine
the extent of the site’s contamination, the
feasibility and projected cost of a clean-
up effort, and the health risks the pollu-
tion poses to both humans and wildlife.
In the meantime, the Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality took charge
by leading a limited cleanup effort of a
small portion of the upland shoreline.
According to a press release issued
by the Portland Harbor Community Co-
alition, the city’s disenfranchised popu-
lations bear the brunt of the pollution’s
negative effects.
“Communities of color and low in-
come people have been most likely to
C ontinued on P age 4